In this essay I will be explaining both types of diabetes mellitus, how diabetes is tested for and how it is treated.

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Introduction

Diabetes CDA Introduction Diabetes is a condition that affects approximately 2.5 million people in the UK and shockingly 1/2 a million people, don't even know they have it. There are several types of diabetes. In this essay I will include type 1 and type 2 of diabetes mellitus, they have different causes and can be treated differently. Even though you cannot cure the condition, it is still easy for people to treat and manage. However, there have been ethical issues, because of the use of certain types of insulin to treat diabetes, but is it possible for the treatment to be ethical for all people? In this essay I will be explaining both types of diabetes mellitus, how diabetes is tested for( using Benedict's test, Clinistix, a blood test and an oral glucose tolerance test), how it is treated and the ethics behind the use of different types of insulin for treatment. I will also include the data from the experiments that I undertook at school (including Benedict's test) and explain and evaluate the results. What is diabetes? Diabetes is an incurable- but manageable condition in which a person's glucose level in the blood is high, the cause of this is either the pancreas does not make enough or any insulin, or the pancreas does not make working insulin. When the pancreas does not make insulin that works properly it is called 'insulin resistance'. First I will explain type 1 diabetes. Type 1 diabetes is a condition that usually appears before the age of 40 and is very common in young children; it is a condition that is much less common than type 2 diabetes. The condition appears from lack of the insulin hormone as the pancreas tissues are damaged. The cause of the damage to the pancreas is commonly known as an 'auto immune' disorder, meaning that the body's immune system is turning against its own tissues- by recognizing the good tissue as foreign and creating anti-bodies to destroy the islet cells' capability of making insulin . ...read more.

Middle

It is now possible to clone human beings- though it is not legal in the United Kingdom, and it is also possible to prevent an unborn baby from inheriting a disease such as cystic fibrosis (if both or one of their parents are carriers or have this disease), this is called 'gene therapy' because the faulty genes are repaired or replaced. Genetic Engineering has also made it possible to make synthetic human insulin, in 1978 scientists synthesized human insulin out of E coli bacteria; in 1982, Eli Lily marketed the first human insulin named 'Humulin'. The way this is engineered is that the insulin gene is extracted and is inserted into the E coli cell, to produce insulin that is chemically and biologically identical to natural insulin. This is Recombinant DNA technology. Insulin and ethical/moral issues There are ethical/moral issues behind both types of insulin production. Insulin can be a problem for many religions if your source of insulin is from an animal. For instance, Muslims and Jews are not allowed to have pork, so they can't have porcine insulin; also their meats have to be prepared in a special way (halal and kosher) so they can't have bovine insulin- unless it is prepared as their religion states. However many Muslim/Jewish followers argue that if their life is at risk if they do not take the medicine they need, then it is permissible; on the other hand, nowadays it is more common to fine 'Humulin'. Also, there are many vegetarians who cannot have insulin from animals, so they also choose to have Humulin. Most Hindu's are vegetarian, but those who aren't vegetarian aren't' allowed to have beef. With Humulin there is also ethical issues, some people believe that putting a human gene into a non-human organism isn't very natural (putting a human insulin gene into an E coli cell to make insulin). However, people who believe this are persuaded by the fact that human genes have the same 4 bases as bacterial genes- so they are similar. ...read more.

Conclusion

When treating these types of diabetes, the aim of treatment is for the blood glucose level to regain its normal level. A doctor may give you a series of tests to diagnose your diabetes. This could be using Clinistix, Benedict's test or an oral glucose tolerance test. All of these tests are designed to detect a higher level of urine/ blood sugar than normal - which could mean you have diabetes and your pancreas does not produce any/enough working insulin. For people with the much more common diabetes which is type 2 diabetes, it is a possibility to manage without medication and only needs diet control, but they may have oral medication or insulin injections. For people with type 1 diabetes they would have to have insulin injections daily. There are different types of insulin, synthetic human insulin (Humulin) or animal insulin. Many people find either of these unethical or they cannot have animal insulin due to religious reasons (such as not being allowed pork or beef or being a vegetarian), whilst others choose not to have the cheaper option, Humulin, because they think it's un-natural to for human genes to be injected to something that isn't human. Diabetes is a condition that needs to be diagnosed carefully and accurately. As I discovered in my Benedict's test experiment/colorimeter measuring, it is very easy to produce a wrong result. It was easy for me to find the anomaly (12% concentration, 0.36 light absorbency) because it did not fit the standard curve and I had a lot of other urine samples to compare to. On the other hand, doctors don't compare the urine samples to other patients and that's why they undertake a lot of tests to see if someone has diabetes. It was a good idea to start with a Clinistix experiment, because that way I could easily exclude the 'urine' samples that did not have glucose in them and therefore test less urine samples for the Benedict's test and then the light absorbency test (colorimeter measuring). Doing the experiments have enabled me to have a better understanding of diabetes. ...read more.

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